After more than 39(!) years of work as a Christian in higher education, I am using this blog to share my thoughts on teaching and learning in undergraduate education, related and unrelated to orthodox Christian faith. Please peruse the archives for a wide variety of topics.
The page author is solely responsible for the content, and the content does not necessarily reflect the views or mission of my employer or any organization with which I am affiliated.

Monday, December 17, 2012

This is more personal than professional, but I have done quite a bit of research on this syndrome and its relationship to Autism. There is a paper on this blog about the subject (check archives from Feb. or March 2010).

The shooter in the horrific Newtown, CT, tragedy is being labeled as having Asperger's. I have written elsewhere of how anyone who has poor social skills gets tagged with this moniker. Asperger's folks are not violent; they might be odd, but not evil. Whatever caused this shooting cannot be laid at the door of Asperger's. It might have been a contributing factor in a remote way, but I would be more likely to think the young man had schizophrenia or some other brain or chemical disorder. And he might have just been morally bankrupt, evil, psychological disturbed as opposed to physically or neurologically impaired.

I would hate for there to be a backlash against the Asperger's community because of misunderstandings on this matter. We need to pray and mourn, not politicize about guns, God, prayer in schools, school safety, bad parenting, blah, blah, blah.

Friday, November 30, 2012

This is a paper I wrote for a doctoral class in leading change in organizations. It might help someone faced with leading a QEP.

Abstract

From 2010 to 2012, the author led
the efforts at her institution to comply with the Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools’ requirement that the college submit a quality enhancement
plan.She encountered challenges in
raising awareness, countering apathy from superiors, obtaining adequate
funding, and writing a coherent document.Using Kotter’s theory of leading change, Hill’s model of team
leadership, and Scharmer’s Theory U, she analyzes her behavior as a leader. Change Analysis:Responding to an Accreditation Board

On an evening in June 2010, I was
checking out at a local grocery store when I saw the chair of the academic
department in which I work.She said,
“Oh, did you get my email?” a question that often implies something negative,
or unexpected, was in the email.“No,” I
answered.She informed me that I was
going to be asked to be the chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan
Committee.“Oh,” was my innocent
response.

I was being asked that question
because during the previous week our assistant vice president of academic
affairs had passed away from an illness of several months.She had been the chair of the committee; I
was a member and had been given the job of QEP editor and committee
secretary.Due to her illness, the
committee had not met since February, and the administration was beginning to
feel the heat of the SACS visit, even though it was still two years away.No real work had been accomplished on the Quality
Enhancement Plan except for an agreement on a vague topic, developmental
studies.

Of course, considering the
circumstances, I agreed to take on the job, and thus began my second major
project as a change agent at my institution.The first was leading the initiation of a teaching and learning
center.Now I would be leading a
different kind of change—one enforced by an outside organization, our
(seemingly all-powerful) accrediting association and one not necessarily being
embraced by the college as anything but a requirement and nuisance.In this paper I would like to explicate the
process of leading this change, what actually changed, the obstacles I
encountered, and what I learned from the
experience.In doing so, Kotter’s model
of leading change (Anderson, 2012, p.83; Kotter, 1995) and Hill’s Model for
Team Leadership (Northouse, 2010) will be used as the theoretical grounding. At the close I will use Otto Scharmer’s
insights into leading change as published in Theory U and comment on how those ideas may have helped our
project.

The Context

Beginning in the early 2000s, the
Southern Association for Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges changed
its philosophy.Before, institutions
were required to complete comprehensive self-studies of their compliance with a
thick book of requirements which were usually referred to as “must”
statements.These must statements
touched on every aspect of higher education; however, institutional
effectiveness was the central focus of the self-study, other than the areas of
faculty credentials, ethical fiduciary practices, and following federal
guidelines.Now, institutions still must
assert and document their compliance with a much-reduced series of requirements
(now stated as “is” or “does” statements rather than “must” commandments).Two of the “does” statements address a
quality enhancement plan that must solve a significant problem the institution
faces, the awareness of which has arisen from institutional research processes,
that involves student learning, and that will be thoroughly assessed and funded
(SACS, 2011 ).

The QEP requirement has presented a
challenge to colleges and universities since its inception.The number of workshops offered at the
annual SACS conference meeting and by SACS at special conferences and the
number of consultants willing to help colleges develop their QEPs-- at a
price--bear witness to the perception that institutions have not understood the
requirement.Specifically, colleges have
proposed QEPs that have not satisfied SACS because they were not focused on
student learning, because they were too ambitious, because they were not
ambitious enough, because they were underfunded, because they have not been
developed with input from all constituents, and, mainly, because they do not
contain clear assessment and institutional effectiveness sections.

At our institution, the
discussion of the QEP plan began very early, in 2008, four years before the
Plan was due to SACS.By late 2008, the
topic was selected.This date was
probably too early, but I was not involved in that decision.I soon realized that the planning was begun
so early because the persons driving the QEP did not understand the
process.I do not say this as a
criticism because the process is complicated.However, the choice to begin so early and the choice of developmental
studies as the topic were not motivated by a desire to address a real problem on
campus, but to comply with SACS.Choosing
the topic so early led to problems later on.External forces would eventually throw some obstacles in our path, and a
weariness and boredom set in.A
four-year change process is probably too long.

The Work

Realizing that my predecessor did
not fully understand the QEP process, my first task after I took the position
as QEP Planning Committee chair was to understand the QEP and what SACS
wanted.That led me to realize that our
committee was not sufficiently broad-based or representative of the whole campus.I also realized that I was responsible for
organizing a process that could easily fall into a chaotic mess and that the
task was what we instructors call “an ill-defined problem.”There were no manuals for running a QEP
Committee, only examples of what the final documents looked like, posted on the
websites of institutions that had successfully passed their SACS reviews.

Hills’ Model for Team Leadership
places three leadership decisions at its core.Should the leader monitor the group or intervene?Should the leader intervene to meet task or
relationship needs?And should the
leader intervene internally or externally?These questions did face me in the summer of 2010.The committee was in disarray, so I could not
leave it to its own devices and simply monitor it.I had to intervene and take a very direct
hand.My intervention focused almost
entirely on task needs, for two reasons.I already knew the members of the committee personally and was (and
still am, thankfully) on fairly good terms with all of them and have
credibility; secondly, the task needs overruled the relationship needs.Additionally, the members of the committee
were in some respects my superiors in terms of education and position.My department head and my dean were on the
committee.Most of the members were
administrators who had been at the institution longer or had more advanced
degrees than I do.They did not need me
to be relationship driven.

Being task-motivated is not
difficult for me personally; in fact, it is probably a fault of mine to see the
task rather than the people.I learned
the detriment of this early.In order to
broaden the base of the committee, we invited a student to join us.However, my agenda was hidden—I wanted him on
the roster but not in the meetings because I did not want a student to be privy
to our discussions of student issues.I
let him know that he did not have to come to meetings but that he could put on
his resume that he served on the committee.He did not respond well to this suggestion, and in retrospect I can
understand why.Another less problematic
obstacle for me was that although I have an M.A. in English and occasionally
teach an English class, I am a member of the Communication faculty and do not
teach developmental English, the eventual focus of the QEP.That meant a lack of internal understanding
but at the same time an ability to see the class with fresh eyes.

Hill’s Model for Team Leadership
lists specific actions in the categories of internal leadership actions, whether
those are task or relational.In terms
of task action, a leader must do the following:goal focusing, structuring for results, facilitating decisions,
training, and maintaining standards.This
list more than adequately explains what I did over the next fifteen to eighteen
months.We began by mapping out the
steps to our goal of submitting the QEP to SACS by July 1, 2012.We revisited this schedule every two or three
months.We divided into subcommittees to
write the various parts of the QEP after the goals and strategies were decided
upon.I created timelines and matrices
for the committee to see the task components.It was my responsibility to educate the committee about the intricacies
of a quality enhancement plan and to maintain and monitor the communication
processes of the group meetings.

Internal leadership actions also
include six relational dimensions:coaching, collaborating, managing conflicts, building commitment,
satisfying needs, and modeling principles.Although in retrospect I could have lightened up and made meetings more
fun, I also recognized that my committee members were extremely busy people,
and they, like I, value meetings that reach the balance between giving
sufficient time for deliberation and not wasting time in nonessentials.There were no major conflicts that arose in
the meetings or that were specific to our group.As in most colleges, there are underlying
turf wars, and those became apparent; in this case, the conflict was between
math and English departments.Ultimately,
we had to decide whether developmental English or developmental math would be
the focus of the QEP.The college
president wanted us to choose math; the Math Department did not want to change
its practices; and the English Department was willing to accept the changes the
QEP would bring.Also, in reference to Hill’s Model, I did not
have to build commitment although I did have to remind members of their
commitment.Finally, I modeled
principles of communication by being transparent and performing more than I
expected of them.

What made this experience
different from a typical committee in an academic environment was first, the
high stakes nature of the task.We were
constantly aware that the accreditation of the college depended on what we
did.Second, we had to be responsive to
external and internal forces, some of them very unexpected (described
below).Third, the committee was
long-term but would eventually disband.Fourth, we truly had to work together in one of the most difficult tasks
a group can have—writing a coherent document.

On the first day of the Fall semester,
2010, just when we were starting to hone in on the task, we learned that the University System was
redefining developmental policy for all state institutions.Up to that point, we had been completely open
access.No student was really excluded
from enrolling at our college.That
meant that a large number of our incoming freshmen needed developmental classes
in all three disciplines—reading, math, and English.The University System passed a new policy
that excluded students who needed three developmental classes, and concurrently
raised score requirements and tightened allowances on repeated developmental
classes.(NOTE:In the University System, developmental or
remedial classes are termed “learning support,” which is the term that will be
used in the rest of this paper).These
policy changes imposed from the system would strongly impact our work.

Another unexpected external force
was the economy and its effects on our budget and enrollment.A third external force was our president, who
suggested, strongly, that we alter the topic by focusing on one discipline of
learning support rather than all three since the college could not afford to
address all three disciplines.Keep in
mind that, even with the system policy changes, a significant portion of our
first-time, full-time students need learning support classes. The president
wanted us to choose learning support math as the topic of the QEP; the Math
Department put up resistance to this proposal.That resistance was an internal force; the math professors on the
committee also lessened their commitment to the process after the decision was
made to write the QEP about English.

The third decision, according to
Hill’s model, involves the question, “Should I intervene internally or
externally?”In this case, I had to do
both.I have already listed some of the
actions I took for internal intervention.An equally large part of the position was to perform the functions
Hill’s Model for Leadership was my communication with the “environment”—the
administration, the English Department, the Office of Institutional Research,
and of course, SACS.Hill’s model lists
networking, advocating, negotiating support buffering, assessing, and sharing
information.These tasks took up more of
my time and energy than the work with committee members.

Specifically, I provided monthly
reports to the campus for publication in the campus newsletter.I wrote press releases and articles.I reported regularly to the Director of
Institutional Research and the Vice President of Academic Affairs and the
President.I was required to find a QEP
evaluator from somewhere in the region, one of the most challenging parts of
the position.I had conference calls
with our SACS Vice President, who required us to significantly rewrite our
first draft and to revolutionize our understanding of student learning outcomes
(not without some resistance and bad attitude on my and the editor’s parts).I met in budget meetings with the Vice
President of Fiscal Affairs.

One of the fun but time-consuming
aspects of the job was raising campus awareness of the QEP.For some reason, SACS threatens that any
student could be asked about the QEP and is expected to know about it.We took this threat seriously and conducted a
massive propaganda campaign.We engaged
student services, a marketing class, the orientation leaders, and others to
help publicize the QEP.We held a logo
contest and a rap contest.We created a
rap video, maintained Facebook and web pages, and I made two informational
videos for YouTube.

Hill’s Model indicates that the
outcome of the team leadership is team effectiveness, which consists of the two
facets of performance (task accomplishment) and development, “the ability of
group members to satisfy their own needs while working effectively with other
team members” (Nadler, 1998, cited in Northouse, 2010).The task was accomplished because on
September 20 our SACS Visiting Team informed us that we had created an
acceptable QEP.We were satisfied with
the task accomplishment and the continued good-standing status of the college
with SACS (and our continued employment), and involvement on the team meant
movement toward promotion and tenure for some of them.

Change Management

On September 20, my work was over.I had overseen a successful committee and
have handed the work of running the QEP over to an English professor who would
be the QEP Director for the five years of the Plan’s implementation.The question remains:Was this twenty-eight month period in my life
simply an exercise in jumping through hoops so that the college could achieve
accreditation, or was it truly a change management process?While it sometimes felt like the former, I
can defend its status as a change process.

Learning support English at our
college was in a rut.It had been taught
the same way for several years.There
was a sense that the way it was taught was the way it had to be and was
supposed to be taught.The QEP shook
that attitude out of us.The course is
now tighter, more technology friendly, more student-focused, and less
tradition-bound.The teachers have more
say over the course and textbooks.The class is capped at 20 students as opposed
to the previous 28.The strategies used in
the class benefit from being based in best practices.A learning community model is being utilized,
and metacognition, or learning to learn and be a self-directed learner, is
being taught and assessed.The changes to
system policy changed the student composition of the class in a negative way,
but our internal forces rose to meet the challenge of the external forces..

The QEP process caused us to
question our assumptions about the learning support English.It meant that the institution had to pay
attention to students it would like to ignore—those who are not really prepared
for college.Having to write a QEP meant
that certain constituencies had to talk to each other and know what each other
was doing.It meant that the
organization’s individuals had to learn more about itself and themselves.

In his 1996 book, Leading Change, Kotter presented “eight
steps that leaders should follow in instituting a major change in their
organizations (Anderson, p. 83).I find
in retrospect that my experience with chairing the QEP committee followed
Kotter’s model almost to the letter.

“Establishing a sense of urgency.”This step was guaranteed for me, in that
a successful QEP was crucial to our reaffirmation.However, I had to remind my constituents
frequently, including my superiors.Much of my job was as a town crier for the QEP.The college administration was reluctant
to fund the QEP; eventually I was able to get a yearly budget of about
$50,000, some of that from grants, but most from reallocations from
Student Services, which caused some friction.

“Creating the guiding
coalition.” Taking the team that was given me, I added more four more
members to it, persons who I believed had the needed expertise.

“Developing a vision and
strategy.”The goal was to pass
reaffirmation.My vision was to do
that and to have a QEP that
mattered.With the committee we
developed a strategy that would accomplish both.

“Communicating the change
vision.”I used almost every organ that
the system had, print, electronic, face-to-face meetings with departments,
even the bathroom “stall wall” to keep the vision in front of the
constituents.

“Empowering broad-based
action.” Although the breadth of my influence was really only the QEP, we were able as a team to cut through
some entrenched policies and practices that research showed was holding us
back from success with our students.Although the QEP process did not make large changes to the system
as a whole, it did make the institution pay attention and come to the aid
of the English 0098 students.The
QEP’s influence touches Student Services, the Office of Technology and
Information Systems, the Writing Lab, the Advising Center, the Center for
Academic Excellence, and the Office of First Year Experience Programs.

“Generating short-term
wins.” It was wonderful for the team to hear on September 20 that our QEP
passed with no recommendations.That step, however, I see as the first short-term win; it proved to
the institution that the process was validated by an outside
organization.The continued changes
that the QEP will bring will be longer-term wins.When we see the success rates of our
learning support students improve, that will really be the win we were
looking for in the change process.

“Consolidating gains and
producing more change.”My work
with the QEP is over, although I continue to be on its advisory committee
now that it has taken effect.One
obstacle we are encountering has to do with the learning community
program.I will keep my eye on that
part because it was something I particularly wanted to see in the
QEP.Complacency about the QEP is a
very real problem; in fact, the SACS team asked us about that possibility.It remains to be seen how the director
will manage the ongoing publicity needed to prevent anonymity.

“Anchoring new approaches in
the culture.”One suggestion that
the SACS visiting team made was to make similar changes to English 1101,
the basic composition course, that were being made to the learning support
English class.In order to respond
to this suggestion, the English Department will begin to explore ways to
do so, such as by reducing class size, incorporating the Writing Lab, and
tracking student success better.

Recommendations

Because the SACS visiting team was
complimentary of our QEP and approved it, I am personally reluctant to second
guess the process.However, there were
some things I could have done better and that taught me about my deficiencies in
leadership.I could have delegated some
of the work better; however, I was getting paid to lead the effort while my
committee members were not.I could have
kept in touch with the administrators more about the issue of funding; however,
our college began to have some unforeseen financial problems in Summer
2012,so unforeseen adjustments ended up
having to be made in original budgets.I
am satisfied with the communication in the team and believe the members felt
free to express themselves, a high value for me.

The question remains, how would
Theory U have helped this change process?Theory U prescribes the going deeper through the levels of co-initiating
and co-sensing to the crucial stage of co-presencing, at which point the group
can move upward to co-creating and co-evolving.In moving to co-presencing, the group or individual must struggle with
the voices judgment, cynicism, judgment, and fear.Theory U strategies may have helped us to
be less tentative about change. It took us a while—and took me some diplomatic
skill—to convince the English faculty and department head that learning support
English needed significant changes, not just tweaks.Further, would my team have been open to the
strategies of Theory U?Not unless Theory U had been championed by the administration or introduced
emphatically into our campus culture.Our campus is conservative and skeptical.I did not have the level of credibility
needed to institute a process of reflection, introspection, and interpersonal
transparency and honesty as deep as Theory
U, nor did I have the time to train them in its use.

In retrospect, perhaps I would
have benefited myself from Theory U,
and then perhaps could have adapted some of it to the group’s
deliberations.As Scharmer writes on
page 384, “So part of the idea f convening these players is to loosen your own
grip on the idea—without necessarily giving it up.”This statement and similar ones convince me
that if I had read Theory U before
June 2010, I would have been a different leader of change, a person more comfortable
in my own abilities and even more a person more comfortable with the synergy
that can come from groups of different people with different ideas but
ultimately a common purpose.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

This is an executive summary/argument for using Action Research at a college.

As Our
institution moves from a two-year college to a full-service baccalaureate
institution, faculty will be increasingly asked to consider their role in the
creation of knowledge for their respective disciplines and instruction in that
discipline.As the Faculty Fellow for
Publication and Communication, I approach the role as one of facilitating not
just faculty development in instructional methods for the classroom, but also
in professional development in the personal, service, and research aspects of their
work.

Concurrently,
I am beginning my journey as a doctoral student in the Adult Education and
Organizational Leadership at the University of Georgia.The goal of the faculty in this program is to
lead us to be scholar/practitioners using, among others, the action research
methodology.

In this
memo, I would like to outline the characteristics of and processes used in
action research and the benefits of this methodology to our college.

Action Research Defined

Action
research is a rigorous social sciences methodology that has been in use in
various forms since the 1940s.Its
earliest uses were in studying group dynamics and relationships.Kurt Lewin, one action research’s
originators, along with his colleagues realized that including the reflections
of their research subjects in their data and in planning research processes
provided a richer array of evidence.

Today,
action research exists in many forms.Some are focused on improving social conditions and ensuring more
socially just conditions; Paolo Freire’s work in South America and much action
research in Scandinavia are examples.Other versions of action research, while embracing a democratic view of
human relations and power, are more focused on solving problems or creating
improved conditions and operations in businesses, schools, colleges, and health
care and social service-providing organizations.

However,
all action research involves a core of characteristics or traits.A composite definition would be “a research
approach combining quantitative, ethnographic, and qualitative methodologies
which focuses on studying and solving real problems in social systems, that
collects data and plans interventions, that views those affected by the
research and problem-solving as research partners, that values democracy and
dialogue, that views knowledge as including knowledge that is socially and
personally constructed, and that requires consecutive cycles of planning,
reflection, action (intervention), and assessment, and replanning.”

Action
research differs from purely quantitative research by requiring reflection and
dialogue, and it differs from purely qualitative methods by allowing, even
requiring, that the interviewees or survey takers be part of the planning process
and fully aware of their agency in the process.However, action research usually incorporates quantitative and
qualitative methods at various points in its repeated cycles.Further, the researcher is expected to be
honest with herself about biases and submit those to the group engaging in the
research or those reading the published findings.

Action
research is also highly reliant on grounded theory for its research and the
manner of its intervention.It is this
action or intervention that also distinguishes action research.In a sense action research is experimental,
but the hypothesis testing is being done to address an existing problem or
deficiency which the organizational leader and/or employees have agreed to
address or have invited the researcher to address.

Action
research adds to the knowledge base by testing and providing evidence for
theories in the respective discipline, or by providing evidence that modifies
the theory.These disciplines include
business development and growth, education, communication, social psychology,
and management, among others.Action
research also adds to the knowledge base of research methods and epistemology.

Traits of Action Research

Action
research, regardless of the location or the contest in which it is conducted,
and regardless of the problem that is being addressed, shares these
characteristics:

Rigorous.The cyclical nature, the requirement of reflection and reflexivity,
and the theoretical bases and prior research demand a detailed, careful,
rigorous process.

Democratic.Those who are affected by the research and the action have a voice
in the design, data collection, and “meaning-making” of the conclusions.

Open.Participants (not “subjects”) are apprised of the goals and
strategies of the study and often partners in choices of such methods.Ideally, action research has no secrets.

Theory-based.

Reflective at three levels.The researcher reflects on the problem,
the research process, and the theory behind the intervention.The participants also reflect
individually and corporately, for example, as part of the initial data
collection and post-action phases.

Cyclical.After one cycle of diagnosis, planning, action, and
assessment/evaluation, another is begun based on what was learned in the
first cycle.An action research study
may include three or four cycles.

Resulting in publishable conclusions.There are many academic journals devoted
to action research.

Flexible, or as Herr and Anderson (2005) term
it, “emergent.”Since each phase of
the cycles, and each succeeding cycle, depends on what is learned
previously in the action research process, the researcher and participants
respond to the found and constructed knowledge and may find themselves
going in unplanned directions.

Autobiographical.The researcher, especially, is
transparent about his or her life experience, standpoints, and thought
processes in the research.

Constructivist.Knowledge is seen, at least partially, as socially and individually
constructed through experience and reflection on experience

Practical.The goal of action research is to solve a problem and to learn from
the process.

Analogies to Action Research

When I
was introduced to the action research process, my first response was, “This is
very much like how the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is
done.”SoTL is rooted in Ernest Boyer’s
work Scholarship Reconsidered (1990), in which he argues that rigorous research
about teaching in a discipline should be considered on par with research in the
discipline.SoTL is a vital part of faculty
development.Faculty members engage in
SoTL informally every day, by trying new techniques in the classroom.The action research and SoTL models allow
them to formalize the use of new pedagogies.

My
second response was “This is what we did with the QEP.”In fact, I have often wondered why SACS does
not present the QEP as action research.It might have helped their communication of the goals of a QEP and
located it in a more useful place for colleges.

Benefits of Action Research to Our
institution

DSC will
benefit from action research in the sense that specific and systemic problems
can be addressed in formal, internally driven, yet inclusive, broad-based,
dialogic ways.Action research will
facilitate reflection and lead to the possibility of faculty presentations and publications.Action research works well in higher
education and other fields which we teach here.

As a
teaching institution, we expect and value quality instruction.That mission lessens the opportunity for
faculty to do in-depth, traditional research.The benefits and processes of action research—problem-solving,
participatory, reflection-oriented, cyclical-- are appropriate for us.

I would
like to suggest two plans.First, I will
model action research as a Faculty Fellow as part of my doctoral research,
which will involve some aspect of improving the assessment and evaluation of
professional development on campus.Second, I would like to present workshops in action research methods
specifically related to instruction and service.The best approach is to have a learning
community of faculty who apply and commit to learning about action research and
engaging in it with a goal of a publication or presentation.

The
question might arise, “What would our institution’s commitment to Action
Research entail?”Because it is a social
sciences methodology, that commitment would largely be in terms of time spent
by the researchers and participants.The
learning community approach would require one-course release time for those who
qualify for participation.Resources
beyond that would involve paper and copying.

Note: I am in two doctoral classes this semester. One is on Leading Change and the other is about Action Research methodology. This is a reflection on my understanding of Action Research.

In
reading Theory U for Dr. Watkins’
class, I came across a casual quotation in the book.It is not a book about action research but
one that is highly dependent upon it.Scharmer quotes Kurt Lewin, “You cannot understand a system unless you
change it.”That quotation hit me like
the proverbial ton of bricks.That is
action research in a nutshell, if you will.It is a process of understanding a system, and the people and processes
within that system, by trying to change it.

I
am writing this essay the day after our SACS visiting team has given us our
final report.They were on our campus
for three days.As the chair of the
Quality Enhancement Plan committee, I had a large responsibility in preparing
for the visit.Starting in June 2010, I
led this effort.It consumed my life, or
a big portion of my professional life, for over two years.I was originally the editor of the document,
but when the chair (our Assistant VP of Academic Affairs) passed away, I was
asked to lead the process.It was a
large statement of faith in me since I don’t (yet) have a doctorate, but I had
acquitted myself well in leading a couple of other major projects.

The
QEP was very much like action research.Perhaps that is why I do not struggle as much with the concept of action
research as some of the others in the cohort:I feel like I have completed a research project very much like action
research.Action research also is about
systems theory and communication processes, and that is my academic
background.

The QEP
process is like action research in the following ways:

1.A change must be introduced into a system and
its effects tracked over five years. I will not be in charge of that process;
another faculty member who has more expertise in the subject matter of the QEP
will be serving as the director. However, each cycle must be assessed
carefully, reported on, and responded to; if the intervention is successful,
new goals are set; if the intervention is unsuccessful, the lack of success is
researched and new strategies instituted, or perhaps revised goals.

2.The
change is a result of research in best practices and theory in the field.The QEP involves an extensive literature
review.

3.The
change is a group effort.I was not the
most knowledgeable person about the subject of our QEP (developmental
English).I do have a graduate degree in
English and have taught the course once or twice in the distant past, but not recently
or extensively.Our work in researching,
writing, and enacting the QEP was truly collaborative.I facilitated the process and believe it was
as democratic as possible, although our SACS representative in the end had a
strong influence on the document (that is common).Along with working collaboratively in the
committee, we worked collaboratively with many members of the whole campus.

4.We
used quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection.Lots of statistics and number crunching, and
lots of interviews and focus groups.

That
being said, there are some differences.The people involved in the QEP process do not think of what they are
doing as research for the good of a system.Unfortunately, we tend to think of it as something we have to do for
SACS compliance.The change feels
enforced from an outside agency rather than internally driven or
motivated.In the end, the change is a
good one (we were able to get a lot of money for our department to improve
educational delivery), but if the college had said, “Here’s $50,000; improve
development English,” it would have been easier!In a related way, colleges can hire
consultants to come in and help them develop their QEPs.We did not do that, mostly due to lack of
resources, and it did not seem to matter.The visiting team was highly complimentary of our QEP and we received no
recommendations—something about which I am very proud.

Another
difference is that the literature review really focuses more on best practices
than on grounded theory.Also, there is
not a strong understanding of systems theory behind the process.Finally, there is not a strong reflective
component to the process.Obviously, we
participants thought and talked a great deal about the QEP because of its vital
role in our being reaffirmed for accreditation, but other than me, I do not
think anyone engaged in real reflective practice about it, even when writing
his or her part of the lit review. I blogged about it and journalled frequently,
but I was very ego involved.

Action
research is often criticized for its lack of generalizability, a criticism I am
not sure I fully understand.That is one
area where I will need to delve more deeply in my concept of AR because it
seems to me that from a systems perspective, traditional research would lack
generalizability as well.Each system is
itself, unique.Systems theory is
closely tied to AR, and this is one of the reasons why I am drawn to AR.Organizations, families, churches, groups,
etc. are systems, not machines.

The analogy of a spider web is apt, I
think. We have a big spider in our yard who builds magnificent webs in
sometimes inconvenient places.The
web’s shape is dependent on where the spider builds it, its environment, so the
web is an open system.The web might be
part angular if woven in the corner of a porch, or totally irregular if built
in a shrub (my spider gets around).Touch any part of the web and it affects the whole web.That speaks to the fragility of a spider’s
web, but I think it also speaks to the fragility of systems, despite how
systems depend on rules and regulations to stay constant.The web is always changing in some way.Systems follow patterns but each system is
different.

This
reflection on AR has been an adjunct to the other document, the memo to my
academic supervisors; this one is more personal than analytic.I am excited about AR and believe in the
process, although the multiplicity of theories that we encountered in the case
studies was daunting.I like that AR is
transparent, demands an admission of positionality, and is practical, flexible,
cyclical, and emergent.I am not
currently committed so much to its social justice uses or the view that all
knowledge is socially constructed; perhaps that will come.To me, action research is life.We are all growing and changing, we learn in
cycles, and we must accept our limitations as research facilitators and
learners.